Disrupting the Trump Monologue
Two weeks before Christmas, news audiences were treated to a rare spectacle in the Oval Office: a bickering debate between President Trump and the Democratic le...
Commentary
If Dems are elected, they’ll do what we’ve been doing!
Recently, a common claim (what scholars of rhetoric would call a topos) has emerged among Trump and GOP media, and it goes like this: if Democrats gain the Hous...
We didn’t go to services
My wife and I didn’t go to services. We went to the planetarium instead. Before the Harry Potter-themed constellation show, a college student dressed as Dumbled...
An Ambivalent Lament for John McCain
At the 2000 Republican National Convention, John McCain gave a particularly somber speech. Quoting Tocqueville, he said he was, like all Americans, "haunted by ...
Donald Trump’s Speech to the National Boy Scout Jamboree
Last week, President Trump delivered a controversial speech to the Boy Scouts of America at their annual Jamboree. Below, a group of rhetoric scholars have writ...
100 days of Presidential Threats
This article originally appeared in The Conversation on April 25, 2017.
President Donald Trump threatens people a lot. He menaces, he bullies and then he exp...
Trump and the Truth: Mocking it or Not?
Part of President Trump’s problem with those who didn’t vote for him is oddly what seems to be an asset for those who did: his trustworthiness. In particular, c...
The Inaugural Address
This installment of Rhetoric Roundup features brief analyses of President Trump's inaugural address from seven rhetoric scholars....
What Donald Trump Does and Does Not Want You to Talk About, And Why You Shouldn’t Care
Even before pulling off one of the great electoral upsets of American history, Donald Trump’s skills at manipulating the media were already the stuff of legend....
The Rhetorical Brilliance of Trump the Demagogue
This article originally appeared in The Conversation on Dec. 12, 2016.
Donald Trump’s December 7 Statement on Preventing Muslim Immigration has attracted wor...